Dear 630 CHED friends. What were you thinking? What were you thinking when you asked THIS question on Twitter this morning?

“It’s very controversial but do you think victims of sexual assault share any blame for what happens?”

The poll question was designed, it appears, to complement a discussion about rape culture and victim blaming – but it’s hard to imagine a more clumsy way of tackling a sensitive and important social question.

So here’s the quick answer. No. No sexual assault victim – female or male – is ever to blame for what happened.

That doesn’t mean that people should refrain from exercising common sense to protect themselves from predators. I myself have argued in my column before that young women who drink to the point of unconsciousness put themselves at heightened risk. But that doesn’t make them to “blame” if they are raped.

The only person to “blame” for committing a crime is a criminal. If you leave your car unlocked and someone steals your CD collection, you may kick yourself for a certain lack of prudence. But you aren’t to “blame” for the act of theft.

So let’s simplify this. If you see a woman (or a man) passed out and you rape him or her, you are a rapist. If, as CHED put is so crudely, a woman “dresses too little,” you do not have license to rape her. If she walks down the street as naked as Lady Godiva, and you rape her, you are to blame. And if she “walks in harms way” – to quote the CHED poll – by walking down her suburban back lane, and you rape her, you are to blame.